The Mumbai police’s early assertion that the lone captured Mumbai terrorist Mohammad Ajmal/Amir Qasab was from Faridkot in Pakistan was treated by Pakistan with derision and dismissed as a characteristically knee-jerk Indian reaction to any terror attack. Now the 21-year-old’s father Amir Qasab has been quoted as saying, "I was in denial for the first couple of days, saying to myself it could not have been my son. Now I have accepted it. This is the truth. I have seen the picture in the newspaper. This is my son Ajmal." That ought to leave an egg on many in Pakistan.
The simple fact is that despite all their crude appearances and often not-so-subtle methods, Indian intelligence agencies have historically been quite accurate about most of their claims. This has been particularly true when it comes to situating terror suspects. The statement by Qasab’s father is by far the most telling evidence that terror suspects do come out of Pakistan in a pattern that India has been complaining about since the late 1980s.
Pakistan has to be egregiously untruthful to still maintain that India does not have evidence to support its claims about the Mumbai terror suspects. President Asif Ali Zardari’s comment that the suspects may be non-state actors could well be true but to the extent that Qasab belongs to the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and that the LeT once enjoyed some patronage from the Pakistani establishment the link is not all that tenuous.
Going by his father’s comments Qasab seems to be fit the classic stereotype of a brainwashed terrorist. He left his home at 17 after his father was unable to buy him new clothes. "He had asked me for new clothes on Eid that I couldn't provide him. He got angry and left," Amir told the Dawn newspaper. It sounds the story of a disenfranchised young man being preyed on by the highly disciplined Islamic fundamentalists with their strangely seductive religious message. It would be glib to attribute the rise of violent fundamentalism merely to the availability of malcontents, although it is a major factor. Deprivation in Pakistan and many other Islamic countries has forced many young men to anchor their aimless lives in the troubled waters of Islamic jihad. While one cannot deny the strong element of deeply felt conviction that brings such malcontents into the ranks of terrorists, one should also look at the equally consequential factors such as deprivation.